Meeting the Needs of All Gifted students

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Hashtag: focus?️‍♀️This is sincerely fascinating them - they’re designing all kind of experiments and hypotheses around this #hydrophobicsand #discovery

A post shared by Lisa Gurthie (@earthiegurthie) on Mar 13, 2019 at 6:35am PDT

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This video was made by request because the #makerspace students wanted you to see this cool #hydrophobic sand action. #PiedmontIB @katie.janak thanks for the idea.

A post shared by Lisa Gurthie (@earthiegurthie) on Mar 13, 2019 at 6:27am PDT

CURRICULUM COMPACTING AT PIEDMONT

​Who?

• Individual or group.

All students who Need a Challenge beyond the regular classwork. (This means Gifted, High Flyers, Disaffected but Talented and even bright but underachieving school-haters who need a motivational push.) 

What?

Piedmont's new Makerspace Classroom/workroom staffed by Ms. Gurthie is available for compacting gifted students and for special projects, PBLs, Love of Learnings, Independent study and more. 

When?

• During class, During 6th block, or on their own

This is up to you and the student.  Students can pre-test out of the class, leave based on map scores or other standardized work, prove mastery through a project that is alternative to the class assignment but takes place at the same time or other. 

Where?

• In the Makerspace Workroom or in your room

Why? 
We are doing better than most schools at serving our gifted and unidentified gifted students, but there is room to grow.

Why not just the "high fliers?" who are responsible to do twice the work. If we only allow teacher-pleasing responsible, quick-finishing students to compact, we will only get a certain narrow slice of the entire demographic. My students today named two boys who they said were very smart but teachers did not know it.


How?

email me with your suggestions of  who what when and where  and if you have any preferences for below:​

• Threading in and out of the full class daily, depending on your daily activities or just check-ins with you when you ask.
• Continuing to do the work of the class as well, or this replacing the work of the class
• With a teacher-chosen product determined before compacting,  a student-chosen product determined by the end, or just email updates from the student or me.

Tools:
These are some of the tools at your disposal. Use the ones that work for your situation or students

• Compcting Contract for Students
• Compacting Contract and PD for Teachers
• Compacting Exit Interview/Evaluation bit.ly/compactingexit
• Compacting Website for Students (made by a student while compacting) 

How it works IRL:

. Here are some real-life examples this school year:

"A" comes alone to work every day for the unit.  I suggested some ideas but she chose to work on  9th grade level materials even though she is in 6th grade. We decided she could start and 9th grade and move down if it iwas too hard. She did not have to move down. She is self motivated and needs no redirecting.  She sought out compacting on her own after trying it for another class.

"B" has worked with a classmate and alone. She is advanced but also scattered and impatient. This is called asynchonous development but, despite immaturity in some areas,  she is still in the correct placement. Not all gifted students are precocious in all areas and some even lag behind. When she compacts with the classmate she is kept on task by the classmate who is much more mature. 

"C" came to me only two times to flesh out what he would do as an independent project for a few weeks of a unit. He chose a narrow subset of a subject being broadly covered in class.  During the unit time alloted, he created a slideshow of what he knew on his own after the inital consultation and did not come in regulary for compating. 

"D" comes in during flex time to learn more about a subject he finds fascinating. He comes a few days a week. His teacher gave him full freedom to study but not create a final project or report. We watch videos together. He tells me what's fascinating about black holes and I find him more infomation about that. Sometimes he loves what I find him, sometimes he doesn't and tells me so. The other day I couldn't work with him and I noticed he was on a website I showed him the previous day. 

AIG certificationBest Practices and Why in 2 minutes:
Edpuzzle - email me for the link to view.

Related Posts:

http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/piedmont-challenges-us
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/compacting-for-personalized-learning
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